The Original IBM PC 5150 - the story of the world's most influential computer

it's time to straighten those neckties shine those shoes and pick up those briefcases because today we're getting down to business this is the story of the IBM PC it's a story that continues to this day so I'm not going to be able to fully do it justice in just the next 25 minutes but it's a story that's probably the most important of all in the microcomputer industry with lessons learned that still reverberate today not to mention the IBM compatible computers most of us still use yes even those of you using Mac's the IBM PC is the only early microcomputer that wasn't a dead end let's start with the obvious something everybody knows but every video or article on the subject seems to need to point out the IBM PC was not the first personal computer coming as it did in 1981 in fact it wasn't even IBM's first personal computer depending on how you count it was there v you're looking at a small portable computer called the IBM 5100 is helping a lot of different people do their work more productively in 1975 IBM built an experimental portable system called the IBM 5100 it was a self-contained unit with a built-in screen that started at around $10,000 it predictably didn't make much of a dent in the market IBM hadn't really expected it to although the system was popular enough to get to follow-ups the 51 10 and 50 120 later that decade IBM began a second experiment that ended up being the system 23 data master Allen looks nervous after years as a bookkeeper she's beginning a new career she will spend the next day or so use the IBM system between data master this was another self-contained machine that also started at around ten thousand dollars and when it finally came out just before the PC he was immediately steamrolled by its own cheaper little brother the data master does have the distinction of being the first computer released with IBM's legendary model F keyboard not the PC that made it famous but being first has never been the point of the PCs legendary status nor its industry influence in early 1970s the computer world was split between mainframes which cost millions of dollars and took up an entire room and mini-computers a new class of refrigerator-sized machines that were still much too expensive and impractical for average people by the way my dad actually was in charge of one of these mainframes for his company and I got to see a room like this in operation when I was a kid but the new micro computers which contained their processing unit on a single chip were beginning to appear as kits for hackers and hobbyists to build ham radios or something hackers and hobbyists could build em radios or something funnily enough that clip from Steve Jobs was actually talking about the Apple 2 that debuted in 1977 one of the first wave of pre-built microcomputers that nevertheless retains some of the hobbyist features of the first wave including the Apple one the Apple 2 Commodore pet and trs-80 were all released in 1977 catapulting a microcomputer into the mainstream interestingly the kitchen seemed to be the preferred computer room in those days these computers required no special know-how they were pretty affordable and they could all do truly useful things for average people although they could still be customized configured and kit bashed if you so desired for four years these companies along with Atari Texas Instruments and a slew of smaller companies both grew and split the market for the most part the industry was driven by small young startups that defined the fast-moving Silicon Valley California culture that we still know today but everybody knew that there was a Goliath waiting in the wings content to sit back and experiment until the market direction was clear new york-based IBM was mired in the stodgy bureaucratic corporate culture that Silicon Valley was trying to disrupt but it was no stranger to the computer market as a whole in fact IBM had made much of its fortune on mainframes and mini-computers dominating the computer industry to that point and becoming one of the 10 largest companies in the world as a result so when rumors started flying around in 1980 that IBM was preparing to finally enter the microcomputer market in a big way the industry reacted with a mix of trepidation and defiance nobody really knew what IBM could or would do and some of IBM's competitors even tried to laugh them off as overly corporate has bins but everybody knew that something big was coming in fact an internal debate had been going on at IBM for some time with executive bill Lowe arguing strongly in favor of IBM designing its own personal computer while others were far more conservative however Lowe did have president john opel and CEO frank carry on his side atari for its part took a pre-emptive if you can't beat them join them attitude offering to design and produce the upcoming IBM pc themselves and believe it or not this almost happened ibm's own engineers had determined that their design process was so slow that it would take nine months to ship an empty box Solo suggested IBM acquire Atari outright and modify their 800 computer rather than designing a new model internally when this didn't go over well with IBM's board the alternative he proposed was to circumvent standard company procedures and allow his team to operate autonomously to get a new design out the door in a year this design would be codenamed acorn IBM stayed corporate culture gave way to a fast-moving core group designing and building the PC at the company's labs in Boca Raton Florida it resembled any Silicon Valley startup Lowe was put in charge of all so-called entry level system development at the Boca Lab while the PC project codenamed project chess or PC had Don Estridge at the lead and mark Dean designing the system bus the pc would be built with mostly off-the-shelf parts to save time and development and standards would be open with third-party hardware and software developers encouraged to develop for the system indeed the operating system itself would be co-developed by Microsoft although after a long and dramatic battle between IBM and Digital research who owned the cp/m operating system that was already popular with businesses CPM 86 was also offered as an option in fact OS development for the PC was probably the most chaotic part of the whole design process and that could be a video unto itself but this nimbleness and openness despite some stumbles was a sea change for control freak IBM and some would argue that they overcorrected one early decision that would later haunt IBM was a sloppy and non-exclusive das license meaning Microsoft was free to sell the PCs main operating system to any manufacturer that wanted it long story short Bill Gates really didn't want anything to do with operating systems and was more or less doing IBM a favor by suggesting they acquire what was then known as 86 das from developer tim paterson IBM had the opportunity to purchase it outright but instead the software team led by Jack Samms suggested Microsoft do so with IBM acting as a licensee and they even allowed Microsoft to retain publishing rights IBM at that point was less confident in their software than their hardware but this arrangement would become a huge thorn in IBM's side as dos clones appeared stealing market share from IBM IBM's PC das and Microsoft's ms-dos would be basically identical and compatible products on sale at the same time but ms-dos quickly buried PC DOS in both sales and popular lexicon the PC would be expandable through various means more memory could be added as could a math coprocessor for the Intel CPU and five expansion slots would be provided for all manner of other hardware upgrades although given the lack of onboard input and output ports this actually proved insufficient for some power users expansion slots were an idea borrowed directly from the Apple 2 as several of the PCs design team owned them reportedly including Don Estridge although the Apple two provided eight slots to the PCs five IBM chose the Intel 8088 as the system's CPU because it was reasonably fast cheap and could be bought in huge quantities unlike the nearly identical but fully 16-bit 8086 which would have caused system shortages even at IBM's somewhat modest early sales goals to be clear the 8088 and 8086 are both 16-bit chips internally but the 8088 8-bit bus also played nicely with the 8-bit hardware IBM was already planning to use elsewhere in the system some say IBM also didn't want to cannibalize sales of its own more powerful mini computers but the difference in speed between the 8086 and 8088 is so small that that seems unlikely IBM had also briefly considered using their own 801 risk CPU that was far faster than either Intel chip combined with their own in-house developed operating system but decided against it to save development time in the end most of the system would be built by third-party vendors or overseas subsidiaries with only the case and keyboard being made internally by IBM in the United States it's somewhat ironic that what we consider the original IBM PC is really not that much different from the many clones that came later however despite the third-party build IBM's Quality Assurance process was so rigorous that one vendor described being overwhelmed by IBM's engineers with big blue even going so far as to test the quality of their solder flux one thing no one can deny about the IBM PC to this day is that it's built like a tank the initial IBM PC release was available with either 16 or 64 K of memory a tape drive interface to internal floppy drives and a 4.7 7 megahertz 8088 those who opted for 16 K could upgrade later options included either monochrome or CGA color graphics although early adopters of the CGA version would need to provide their own monitor to get those color graphics since IBM only offered a monochrome one at launch this was problematic because most early CGA monitors could only do play eight out of the system's sixteen colors correctly forcing IBM to eventually offer their own color monitor the PCs model number was the 5150 establishing it in the same family as the earlier 5100 prices for the system started at fifteen hundred and sixty-five dollars including a CGA card which was a lot more competitive than many had predicted importantly the system shipped with reams of documentation and more was available for just $36 per book this one a long way towards encouraging development for the system software and hardware developers didn't need to pester IBM for this stuff as they would from a company like Apple this made every PC feel like a development system now I've seen people say that the PC was underpowered at launch and that's simply not true you can't look at other computers throughout the 1980s you have to look at what was actually on the market in 1981 because it's not like the PC stood still as the decade went on either IBM's competition in 1981 included the Apple two plus the trs-80 model 3n color computer the Atari 400 and 800 commodore vic-20 and pet and TI 99 for a various small manufacturers were also making nearly identical CPM based machines running two or four megahertz z80 CPUs in every specification important to businesses the PC was either equal to or better than all these machines in some ways dramatically so in business IBM's most serious competition came from Apple and Tandy both of which were also able to run CPM and its software as well as their own the Apple through the use of a Microsoft made expansion card that added a z80 but the PC was between two and four times faster than these machines with equal or better amounts of RAM and had real RGB color as an option something neither the trs-80 model 3 nor the Apple 2 plus offered the Apple 2 could do color through NTSC artifacting but this made for blurry colored in text compared to the PCs razor-sharp white text even in 80 columns on a color screen and in the fact that an Apple 2 required a separate Hardware purchase just to be able to run CPM and its line of applications like Word Star and super calc and there wasn't even much of a price difference between the two machines the PC also had wood byte magazine called the best keyboard Bar None on any microcomputer IBM was already well known for its keyboards with its Selectric line of typewriters being the enterprise industry standard since 1961 in its beam spring technology terminal keyboards that had been on sale since the 1970s the PC keyboard was designed to replicate the feel of a beam spring keyboard at a smaller size and lower cost using a new proprietary technology called a buckling spring these keyboards were very different from anything included with other micros at the time with a tactile bump and click that gave a positive physical response when a letter was pressed we take this for granted today but this was a new thing pioneered by the IBM PC byte also noted that despite the shift keys being in odd positions PC keyboard made fewer layout compromises than most keyboards of the time typists loved them and still do now by modern standards the model F keyboard would make a great blunt force weapon it's heavier than Babe Ruth's 4 pound bat which he used to hit baseball's 450 feet or more but in 1981 this would have been considered impossibly light something you could easily keep in your lap for long periods Aldous probably would have added up to a success even without one of the most well known marketing campaigns in computing history IBM hired ad agency Lord Geller Federico and Einstein and they came up with a campaign starring a Charlie Chaplin look-alike who simplifies his business and his life in the charming way only Charlie Chaplin and an IBM PC can IBM but a lot of what it knows about computers into the new IBM personal computer not to make it complicated but to make it be simple so it's easy to understand and easy to use IBM made its personal computer to help the person be more productive to have a person be more creative and those are good reasons for a person to feel good the IBM personal computer coming to selected stores across the country these ads began running in November of 1981 won a bunch of awards and helped define the image of the PC as a serious corporate machine but also something kind of cute and inviting it was the perfect campaign to sell this new computer and it also helped to update IBM's stodgy image without completely redefining it after all IBM realized that corporate culture across America was changing its own Silicon Valley competitors were proof enough of that the PC was an instant hit reviews gushed over what was perceived as a perfect balance of Technology build quality and price especially considering the intended business demographic byte magazine closed its review by calling it the closest they'd seen to a computer that was all things to everybody noting that IBM should be proud of those who designed it the UK's personal computer world reviewers said it was the most professionally put together system he had seen predicting that the whole world and its grandmother would soon be creating software for it IBM took orders for more than 35,000 machines in 1981 but could not fill them all despite planning for much higher sales than their previous microcomputers IBM still underestimated demand production ramped up by 1982 and sales eventually reached one machine every minute of every business day that year continuing to grow at an almost exponential rate every year thereafter through the late 80s by 1985 the piece he was already dominating the microcomputer market over the years the original PC would be revised to stay ahead of its main competitors adding things like more ram through a motherboard update and harddrive support in a new BIOS chip to the same model 5150 it didn't stay the same machine it was in 1981 so if you buy one of these today make sure you actually know what you're getting the PC was not initially a gaming powerhouse that would come later but constant revisions and updates would keep it competitive and appealing to business users the PC XT or extended technology would be released in 1983 just two years after the original PC adding in a standard hard drive in place of one of the two floppies a beefier power supply and three more expansion slots to remedy one of the PCs main shortcomings the last computer IBM released in what would become known as the original PC family it was 1984 SPC 80 or advanced technology coincidentally the same year Apple released its 1984 ad which ironically just proved IBM's dominance only three years after the pcs launch Apple computer will introduce Macintosh and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984 the 80 was a much more intensive update than xt had been launching with a 286 cpu running at six megahertz later the XT would be offered with that same CPU while the 80 got a bump to eight megahertz a slimline 1.2 megabytes loppy Drive was standard the second floppy drive and up to two hard drives were factory options a redesigned model F keyboard was also standard adding lock lights and a new layout that's closer to what we know today a year later the enhanced keyboard that we now know as the model M was offered as an optional upgrade for both the XT and 80 this keyboard introduced the standard layout that's still in use on modern keyboards today maybe most importantly IBM completely redesigned the system bus in the 80 upgrading it to 16 bit to match the 16-bit data bus of the 286 while maintaining backward compatibility with the 8-bit bus of previous machines this backward compatibility quickly became a hallmark of the PC ecosystem and one that continues to this day the 286 also allowed for a maximum of 16 megabytes of RAM which was far higher than most of the eighties competitors in 1984 or even several years into the future the Amiga 1000 for example allowed a maximum of eight point five megabytes the Atari ST a maximum of four my Apple to see also introduced in 1984 topped out at 1.125 then again it is an 8-bit machine simply put if you had a memory intensive task between 1984 and 1987 your only real choice was a PC 80 or a clone of one ironically the faster 286 CPU was the first hint of the PC market CPU fragmentation that would see some apps running too fast once clones appeared and especially 386 machines many would include a turbo button that would in fact slow down the speed of the CPU went off to better match what older applications expected eventually applications either got smarter about running on CPUs at different speeds or more often were just tuned to the fastest CPU currently on the market and would run like crap on anything less I haven't even mentioned the PC Junior yet IBM's ill-fated 1984 attempt at a home version of the PC IBM had thought that the PCs competitive price would make it attractive to home users as well as businesses but the home computer market in the mid 80s was being taken over by small inexpensive graphics and sound powerhouses like the Commodore 64 and Atari XL line the PC junior had better graphics and sound than the PC but less ram and expandability and an absolute turd of a keyboard it bombed harder than new coke and water world put together big part of the problem was its price which was not much less than a full PC but its chiclet keyboard made it the butt of jokes and became its unfortunate hallmark the keyboard was revised later to something more traditional albeit still pretty nasty and feel and with an unreliable infrared connection but the damage was done the PC junior was discontinued just a year after its launch check out my Tandy 1000 video for more on the PC junior because it's graphics and sound modes did live on for a time through that machine and you can see more of them in that video IBM themselves never really did figure out a way into homes but the clone makers including Tandy by that point did all three of the original non junior PC family machines were on sale at the same time from 1984 through 1987 along with the XT based portable PC and the later PC convertible largely developed in response to compacts portable claw when they were all discontinued in favor of the ps2 line in 1987 however they weren't the only pcs on sale by then IBM's decision to use off-the-shelf parts and copyright only the bios proved costly at the time although looking back through history it may have actually helped the system stick around over the long term as early as 1981 other manufacturers were looking to produce ms-dos compatible machines to capitalize on the pcs popularity all they thought they needed to do was buy the same parts IBM put in their PC and license ms-dos from Microsoft then sell their machines at a slight discount the problem with this is that without the bios these machines weren't really pc compatible so while they'd run Doss they'd only run certain applications on top of it anything that required low-level hardware access wouldn't work IBM thought they pulled a clever trick by publishing both full documentation and the actual copyrighted code to their BIOS in the PCs technical reference manual that meant that anyone who incorporated the BIOS could be sued for copying it straight out of the manual and this actually happened several times but reverse engineering was explicitly legal the hard part was proving that you'd reverse engineered the BIOS rather than relying on IBM's published coke the inclusion of the BIOS in the manual made proving this a lot more difficult but not impossible was strict documented supervision over the process and employees involved and within nine months the engineers at Compaq Computer had done it the first truly IBM compatible machines were on the market from Compaq and others by 1982 and there was absolutely nothing IBM could do about it they didn't own the hardware they didn't own the operating system and they didn't even own the reverse-engineered by us in the beginning every manufacturer needed to go through the same process compacted which limited the damage but by 1984 there were commercially available biases that were functionally IBM compatible this allowed clones to spring up like weeds through the mid 80s which gave IBM fits but almost certainly helped the PC become an industry standard as every other system of the period withered and died the PC just kept going helped along by competitors pushing the technology forward and lowering prices the clone makers immediately snapped up the latest CPUs from Intel and added in things like cd-rom drives EGA vga and super vga cards for better graphics and bigger and faster hard drives as soon as they became available Intel and Microsoft both began supporting the PC platform as their primary business ensuring backward compatibility in their newest offerings IBM for its part tried to retake some control from the chaos with the ps2 line in 1987 breaking compatibility with a new proprietary system bus but that's a subject for another day suffice to say that they weren't all that successful and the market moved on in its own direction by then ignoring IBM eventually IBM would begin making machines compatible with the clone makers rather than the other way around before selling their hardware business altogether in 2004 IBM had lost control of its own architecture still the PC made the company a ton of money and cemented their legacy is probably the most definitive company of the modern computing era yes even more so than Apple who made such a public show of calling out IBM in their 1984 1984 ad threw in the towel against them for the second time the first being ditching the Apple 2 Broke backward compatibility with their own Mac operating system and switched to PC architecture in 2005 ironically they did so partially by ditching a CPU line the PowerPC that had been developed by IBM and was in fact a direct descendant of the 801 chip that IBM had considered for the PC despite its massive success it seems like the PC became a curse that IBM just couldn't escape and despite their own successes by then and architecture live even Apple was forced to embrace these days are more likely to see IBM compatible architecture labelled x86 architecture because very little in a modern computer hasn't been upgraded beyond anything IBM was involved with maybe more to the point it's also not really in anyone's commercial interests to use the term IBM compatible anymore but you can take any IBM PC application from 1981 and natively on a modern PC or even a Mac no emulation required as long as you've got the right operating system the hardware architecture is still backward compatible all the way to the beginning and even many modern desktops bear more than just a passing resemblance to the original PC and that's a pretty amazing legacy for a machine that's nearly 40 years old one little coda to the PC story while many of those involved in the pcs development have naturally passed on over the years Don Estridge now known as the father of the PC was suddenly and tragically killed along with his wife and several other IBM employees in the 1985 crash of Delta flight 191 in Dallas Fort Worth while the world is worse off for his absence what he left behind changed the industry forever we salute you Don you

Channel: Modern Classic

Views: 487,699

Rating: 4.8996382 out of 5

Keywords: computers, vintage computing, ibm, ibm pc, ibm 5150, early computing, retro computing, model f

Id: 0PceJO3CAGI

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2018

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[u/meeheecaan]

ill watch when home it looks cool